Tipping the Scales

By Robin Bady

Story Summary:

When camp started, tension was high between the Chinese kids and Black and Latino kids in Robin’s group. But over the summer, the children began to let their defenses down and make new friends. That is, until Daniela returned.

Hello, I’m Robin Bady. So, it was a couple of summers ago… maybe, many, that, ah, I was going to my first day of my first summer job in New York City. It was to be the head counselor of the Hamilton Madison Day Care Center in Chinatown, in New York. I was excited because I did not have to be a waitress like my friends. So, I arrived there and I go straight to the cafeteria and there are the children. They’re sitting at two tables, two very distinct tables. At one table were the Chinese children and the other table where all the black and Puerto Rican children. Distinct. Separate.

Well, my supervisor, Mrs. Louie, she had told me, “They don’t get along. They’re like oil and water. They don’t mix. The Chinese children live in Chinatown. The black and Puerto Rican children live ah, in like, all the new projects around Chinatown and they don’t talk to each other. But you shouldn’t worry. Your main problem, Daniella, who likes to upset things, she won’t be here for the summer.

Well, I thought, now I had just moved from Chicago where I had worked with really, really tough kids who had been in gangs. Teaching theater, for goodness sake. How difficult could a group of 11 and 12-year-olds be? So, I jumped right in. And I did whatever it is you do when you have an underfunded program in, an underserved neighborhood. I made do.

And I’ll tell you, we had fun! And little by little things started to change. It started to shift and, I mean, first it started with the girls just putting their head on me and, you know, slipping their arms through mine. And then the boys, you know, let’s go and do an arm wrestle, which I always, for real, lost. And then the table started to mix and the groups of children started to make friends in the other groups. And, and we were one, big group.

Now, I know, and I’m sure all of you know, we’re not supposed to have favorites, but Elizabeth. Now Elizabeth was a new immigrant to this country as many of the Chinese children were. She had just come over six, eight months ago and, within no time at all, she was speaking English fluently, and she was reading almost as fluently. One day she said to me, “Miss Robin do you know Shakespeare?” Well, hey, I was going to acting school; of course, I knew Shakespeare. The next day, I brought her one of my Shakespeare copies of Folger’s edition of “Julius Caesar.” She opened it up randomly and she looked at it; she went to sit down. The children gathered around, and with her finger, she began to read out loud.

“Why…man…he doth bestride the very world like a Colossus.” She had chosen my favorite speech! “And we petty men walk under his huge legs and peep about and find ourselves dishonorable graves. Men at some time are masters of their fate. The fault, dear Brutus, the fault lies not in our stars but in ourselves that we are underlings.” This this was the BEST SUMMER EVER!

Well, the, the first day of the last week, I arrived at the facility with all the circus equipment because I was going to do a whole circus week and we were going to end with a big circus day. And I got there, and the boys were all fooling around in the back as they had been doing for a while, and at the two tables in front of me, were the girls. On one side were the Chinese girls and on the other side were the black and Latino girls. Two distinct groups.

And sitting at the head of the table with the black and Latino girls, was a girl I’d never seen before. Her back was straight, her head was straight, her arms were crossed. And all the girls sitting at the table with her, my girls, were sitting exactly like her, with that same hard look in their eyes. Okay. I took my hand and I stuck it out because I’m a friendly kind of person and I said, “Hi. Hey, Daniella, I know it…wel… welcome back. I’m Robyn.” And she looked at my hand and she looked away. And all the girls looked at my hand and looked away.

I had heard about Daniella. She was the kind of girl who’d like to upset things and make things difficult. Only her, her old teacher, whom I had replaced, could handle her. I got it. What had been going so well had now turned into a war, which…I realized I was going to lose. And so the next bunch of days went exactly like that. If I wanted to do something, I had to go through Daniella, and then it would happen. You know, I looked at her. What was it about this child? She was a child. She was 12 years old. Nothing special jumped out but there was something that she had that made a group of girls follow her blindly. And it’s not like she was even nice to them, even. She was cruel and they were cruel too. I didn’t get it. I didn’t.

Well, Thursday, couple of days had gone by, Thursday, I, I went in and, uh, had my morning… I ran out to lunch. I was delighted. And slowly and regretfully, I started back after lunch was over. I was crossing Catherine Street when the door to the facility slammed open, and out came a counselor holding Elizabeth in his arms. Holding her, and her arm was straight up and around it was wrapped a white cloth that was dirty. And then a cab screeched to a halt, they got in, they screeched away. Mrs. Louie came to the door, “You better get into your classroom.” And so I ran. And when I got there, the door was open, there was glass on the floor. It was glass from the one glass panel in the wooden door. And my kids, my kids were standing there in shock. I walked towards them.

And that’s when Sandra broke, “Oh, Miss Robin! Elizabeth, Elizabeth stood up for Mary. Daniella was picking on her and, and Daniella pushed her down. So, so Mary said, ‘Stop!’ And then Daniella pushed down, pushed Elizabeth down. And then, and then…” And then, the other kids joined in.

“Right. And then, and then, Daniella and her group of girls, those mean girls, they, they went out. And they, they pulled the door shut. And Elizabeth started to open it, so we could get out.”

And, apparently what had happened, it had been back and forth between the girls. Pushing and pulling one way, and the other, and the other way, until finally, Elizabeth’s hand went through the door. I looked around. Where was Daniella? And where were her girls? And then, Miss. Louie came in and told me that they had, they had run away. They had left and that everybody was looking for them out and I should take the children outside, which I did.

And so, we sat there not knowing quite what to do. We were in the playground. Some kids got on the swings but had no energy. Some were on the benches next to me and some went on to the see-saw. Up and down, and up and down. And finally, when it was time to go in, we went in and who followed behind us? Daniella and her posse. And they came, and they left. As I was about to leave, Miss Louie told me that the girls had been going through the area and had been ripping off candy from the stores.

Well, the next day Daniella and Elizabeth were both not there. And what had begun so, so beautifully ended with a whisper.

Well, I’ll tell you, it happened a while ago, but I still think of that time. Of what one person did. How did that one child have so much power? You know, it was kind of like a see-saw in the playground; up and down, and up and down. Like the scales of justice; up and down. Black, white, red, brown, yellow, and all the rest; up and down. Good and bad. And sometimes balance or not. “The fault, dear Brutus, lies not in our stars but in ourselves that we are underlings.”

What is it you do, we do, with our power? Do we use it to push people apart or to bring them together?